Three Scientists Win Nobel Physics Prize for Quantum Discovery

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis for their groundbreaking research that demonstrated quantum mechanical effects on a macroscopic scale. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm announced the trio's award for their "discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit."

During the 1980s at the University of California Berkeley, the international team of researchers conducted pioneering experiments using electrical circuits. Their work successfully showed that quantum tunneling—where particles pass through barriers—and quantized energy levels could be observed in systems much larger than the atomic scale, making quantum phenomena tangible in human-sized objects.

The Nobel Committee emphasized that the laureates' research proved "bizarre properties of the quantum world can be made concrete in a system big enough to be held in the hand." This breakthrough demonstrated that quantum effects don't necessarily disappear in larger systems, challenging previous assumptions and opening new frontiers in physics research and technological applications.

The 2025 award continues the Nobel tradition of recognizing transformative physics discoveries, following the 2024 prize awarded for foundational work in artificial neural networks. Since the prize's inception in 1901, the Physics Nobel has been awarded 119 times to 230 laureates, with John Bardeen remaining the only physicist to receive the honor twice.